Hoosier landscapes recalled
Hoosiers might be under the misconception that Indiana was once covered in forests from top to bottom, but that’s not the case. Indiana had a much greater diversity of landscapes and species, and much of the state was covered with tallgrass prairie filled with bison, prairie wolves and grizzlies.
Ecologist Joseph Eisinger will present “The Lost Landscapes of Indiana: Prairies and Wetlands of the Hoosier State’s Past and Present Hosted by Gabis Arboretum at Purdue Northwest” in a Zoom webinar at 2 p.m. Jan. 16.
Eisinger graduated from Purdue’s wildlife sciences program in 2015. He’s grateful to have been able to partner with the Arboretum to present webinars during the pandemic. “The Lost Landscapes of Indiana” is a program he created for the Gabis, he said.
Coming across the native prairies would have been a striking scene, he said, a mysterious landscape full of the wild and unknown.
“We have had lots of other wetlands of various types throughout the state but a significant portion of the wetlands and the majority of prairie in Indiana’s history has been in Northern Indiana, much of which is now under farmland,” he said. “About 15 percent of the state at one point was prairie or grasslands and about 25% as wetlands. Today, we are down to about one percent of the original prairie landscape and about four percent of the original wetland area.”
So, what happened? That’s what they will be discussing in the program, as well as many of the ecological things that have occurred over the years.
“Including one of the largest if not the largest inland marsh areas in the United States, the Grand Kankakee Marsh, which at one point covered a very significant portion of Northern Indiana and Illinois and was larger than the Everglades and was home to a huge abundance of wildlife and native plant species and was a really significant place in hunting cultures both native and settlers,” he said.
In the 1800s, that whole area was subject to a huge engineering project to straighten and dredge the Kankakee River and drain the surrounding marshes, he said. As a result, there’s only a fraction of that ecosystem left, he said.
“We’re describing what was, what happened, what we lost and then what is being restored and how we can help restore some of those landscapes back to their native ecosystems,” he said. “We’ll spend a little bit of time talking about some of the specific species that are associated with those types of habitats in Indiana and where you can find pockets of those habitats that remain and where the most significant restoration efforts are ongoing and how you can be involved.”
For example, the Kankakee Sands area has a bison refuge and even received more bison last year, he said.
“It’s a great project seeking to restore bison as the primary native grazers regulating that habitat,” he said.
Other specific things that he’ll hit on in the presentation include the difference between marshes and wetlands, as well as bogs, fens and marshes.
“We have a really rich glacial history in Northern Indiana
that has created quite a pockmarked landscape with lots of different types of wetlands that we can talk about,” he said. “We’ll touch on various native species … but also the human history of how these landscapes were created and lost and are being restored and how people can help.”